Combined with the 15-year, $55 million a year that the SEC will receive from CBS for the over-the-air package of games (SportsBusiness Journal, Aug. 18-24), the conference will bring in an average of $205 million annually in media rights beginning in 2009-10 and running through fiscal 2025.The deal is staggering in its nature, but the much bigger news relates to Comcast and ESPNU. Those two entities appear close to reaching a deal which would put ESPNU on 7 million additional Comcast basic cable packages.
That’s nearly three times what the SEC had been receiving in TV revenue as part of its current deal, which runs out next spring. That amounted to around $70 million per year.
According to Wes Durham on 790theZone this morning and confirmed via the Comcast news linked above, ESPN will use the new SEC deal to bring ESPNU into the mainstream. A likely SEC TV schedule next year (during a typical week) would be:
- Best Game: CBS at 3:30 pm
2nd Pick: ESPN at 7:45 pm
3rd Pick: ESPN2 night game
4th Pick: ESPNU 12:00 or 12:30
With this cash infusion, we could essentially buy out Georgia Tech and sell their program for spare parts.
This deal has been executed about 10x more effectively than Jim Delany's Big 10 TV deal. Also, the last Notre Dame / NBC contract was rumored to be worth $9 million a year. Their recent extension of the deal to 2015 doesn't have announced terms. But how much better can it really be than the $15-17 million per team deal that the SEC teams just inked?
In other words, does Mississippi State now have a more lucrative TV deal than Notre Dame? (ht - Matt at SportsCrack for that question)
More later today.
PWD
